Existing entrepreneurial cognition studies have primarily focusedon top-down processes for allocating attention to notice and inter-pret environmental-change signals of potential opportunities. Top-downprocesses rely on existing knowledge structures to direct entrepreneurialattention. Entrepreneurs use their knowledge structures to deductivelyinteract with the environment to notice, interpret, and respond to changesin the environment that signal a potential opportunity. For example,entrepreneurs with knowledge about the pharmaceutical industry arelikely to attend to environmental changes in this industry but less so tochanges in other industries, such as the semiconductor or software industries. Therefore, a knowledge structure focuses attention on aspects of theenvironment that are expected to inform entrepreneurial action.